Make Your Own Star Trek Animations At GoAnimate.com – TrekMovie Takes A First Look

Today Star Trek is getting (re)animated, and this time you are the one calling the shots. CBS has hooked up with GoAnimate.com, a site with the motto ‘anyone can animate,’ to give fans the ability to create their own Star Trek animated stories, based on the classic Original Series. TrekMovie.com got an early look at the GoAnimate Trek site which went live this morning, see what we came up with below

YouTAS GoAnimate.com’s free online application allows Trek fans to create animations without any drawing talent or the need for a technical understanding of advanced software programs, in just a few clicks you can create your own animations. This launch video gives you a general overview of how GoAnimate works.

GoAnimate Star Trek overview

At the GoAnimate.com, users can activate animated versions of the entire TOS crew (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov), plus Mirror Spock, Kang, Khan and an Orion Slave Girl. Each character has a full range of actions and expressions. Plus there are a number of classic Trek locations (like the Bridge and Vulcan and more), props (phasers, tribbles, etc), sound effects and music to fill out your animated production. And if that isn’t enough for you, then ou can also import your own images and sounds.

Create your own landing party

Once you make your animation, you can can share it with friends and social networks. GoAnimate is integrated with both Gmail and Yahoo! Mail contacts, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Reddit. And if you don’t have a lot of time you can create quick animated "eMessages" using pre-defined templates that already include different characters and scenes, enabling you to simply add dialogue and then send a quick animated note to your friends.

This new free site is a very cool addition to the world of Star Trek and shows how CBS is really trying to expand the scope of Trek and empower the fans. In a statement CBS Consumer Products Executive Vice President Liz Kalodner said:

Star Trek fans are amongst the most dedicated fans on the planet, and they often look for new ways to highlight their enthusiasm via creative channels. GoAnimate provides a platform that enables anyone to easily create their own Star Trek animated stories – with absolutely no experience in animation necessary. We are happy to provide the millions of dedicated Star Trek fans this new tool in which to creatively express themselves, and we can’t wait to see what the community develops.

TrekMovie Review & first trial animationScience Fiction fans have always been among the most creative, and Star Trek is not at all lacking in fan fiction. But, with this handy tool you can really take your story to a new level. And, if you’re not of a creative writing brain, playing around with Go!Animate’s features will let you build your story from scratch. For functionality, this service gets five stars. You really get in depth options as to what your characters can do, say, and express. Moreover, characters can interact with props and objects. The multitude of choices you are given really allows for countless combinations to create a vivid and real story. Also, Go!Animate really doesn’t hold back when it comes to giving you good default choices for scenes and background music, which really helps.

‘how to’ demo of Star Trek GoAnimate

Some of the controls are a bit confusing at first, but there isn’t too much of a learning curve. Play around with various features and effects for a few minutes and you’re already a pro. What I like best about Go!Animate is that it is truly "fully functional". By that I mean that you can take the basic outline they give you and really create something entirely your own. You can even edit and delete elements from sets. Don’t like the bridge with furniture? Click and it’s gone!

To show you just how easy and fun it is, we’ve created a nice little example clip. It took me about 45 minutes to create in total, but that includes changing and editing scenes several times over. If you already have an idea of what you want your story to be, you could create a few minute clip in less than half an hour.

Yeah, I know what I am going to be doing all day today while I am supposed to be working. Thanks for adding me to the list of unemployed…this is awesome!

February 10, 2009 4:44 am

Star Trackie

Can’t wait to play around with that site! Thanks for the tip, I never knew it was out there.

February 10, 2009 5:12 am

Holger

This cartoon Enterprise looks better than the new one!

February 10, 2009 5:23 am

Mazz

It’s a trap!!!

February 10, 2009 5:29 am

Ensign Ro- (short for Roland)

Now this is one of the coolest sites I’ve seen come down the Pike (pun intended) in quite some time. As a self-taught artist and animator, I can really appreciate what goes into something like this. I’ve already bookmarked it and plan to visit it often.

Sulu and Chekov have swapped seats (get a life).
Guess that’s McCoy dancing by the engines.
This style of animation with a heavy border around everything seems very popular right now. Where did it originate from?
I like the floating tribbles too.